Two inspiring weeks in Uganda

A reader gathers and shares the story of how co-operatives are changing lives

A pair of children that Deborah Chatterion met while on her two-week visit to Uganda.

I had only been in Uganda for two weeks but while packing my suitcase to come home I felt like there was a vacuum in my chest.

I toured northern Uganda between Nov. 21 and Dec. 5 as one of a small group of volunteers with the Canadian Co-operative Association. Each of us was selected to interview Ugandans whose lives are being lifted out of poverty though membership in a co-operative.

We left Uganda both sad and happy, tired but inspired. Changed people who are determined to become better global citizens.

After some 24 hours of air travel via Vancouver-Edmonton-Toronto-London-Entebbe, I arrived in Kampala, a city of about 1.6 million people. The streets are chaotic; we saw entire families on one motorcycle, and trying to cross the road was akin to playing a live version of the video game Frogger.

But Ugandans are welcoming—as our van pulled into each town we were greeted with smiles, sometimes with singing and performances, and nearly always by a group of giggling children.

Every day we saw distressing signs of poverty—from the shoeless woman with a baby on her back who begged at the windows of our van, to the children who were wearing the cast-off Christmas pyjamas of western kids. But every day also brought joy and hope that, with time, the fortunes of the Ugandans we met would change.

At each co-op we conducted hours of interviews with people who had travelled miles just to tell us their story. Seventy to 80 per cent of the Ugandan population sustains itself with small-scale agricultural production. The people we interviewed were members of Savings and Credit Cooperatives, which provide affordable access to credit; Rural Producer Organizations, which provide training to help farmers diversify and grow the best crops for their land; and/or Area Cooperative Enterprises, which offer marketing services such as bulking so that farmers can get a good price for their crops.

I met Salvatore at the Akoloda ACE, a marketing co-op in the town of Alito, which was at the heart of the fighting during the civil war.

Salvatore told me how he was captured by Joseph Kony’s men and tortured. When he was free he returned to Alito with a baby boy, Bob, whose parents had been killed in the fighting.

I couldn’t hold back my tears though I was fighting hard to stop them because I didn’t want to put Salvatore in the position of having to comfort me. But when the tears wouldn’t stop he put his hand on my arm, looked into my eyes and said, “It’s okay, it was a long time ago and things are better now.”

He went on to tell me how he approached the Akoloda ACE for help and was given maize (corn) seeds. His first planting yielded a bumper crop and with the proceeds he purchased another 32 sacks of seeds. With his new-found security, Salvatore was able to put Bob through school. Bob is now 19 years old and in college, and Salvatore has since had two children of his own.

Although I was fortunate to also go on both a safari and a Nile River cruise, my favourite part of travelling in Uganda was meeting Ugandans.

As an employee of Vancity I see daily how access to credit and concern for community and the environment has a positive impact on people’s lives in B.C.

But it was rewarding to see firsthand the power of co-operatives in the developing world.

Deborah Chatterton is a communications consultant at Vancity, and volunteer with Canadian Co-operative Association. Deborah’s trip blog, Lessons from Uganda, can be viewed at http://lessonsfromuganda.wordpress.com/

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